The Gramscian Intervention in the Theoretical and Political Production of the Latin American Left 1

The Gramscian Intervention in the Theoretical and Political Production of the Latin American Left 1 by Raúl Burgos 2 Translated by Carlos Pérez 3 Que le dijo el movimiento comunista internacional a Gramsci No tengo edad, no tengo edaaaad para amarte . —Roque Dalton Numerous studies exist on the dissemination of Antonio Gramsci’s work in Latin America.That the subject merited an international conference orga- nized by the Instituto Gramsci (Gramsci Institute) in Italy titled “Political Transformations in Latin America: Gramsci’s Presence in Latin America Culture” 1 in itself demonstrates the importance of his ideas in the region. I would like to advance some observations concerning this process. First, chronology: the history of the relationship between Latin America and Gramsci’s thought can be divided into two distinct periods, one extend- ing from the 1950s to 1975 and the other from 1975 to the present.During the first period, Argentina and Brazil were the principal centers for the publication of Gramsci’s writings.The Argentine editions of the Editorial Lautaro, which was associated with the Partido Comunista de la Argentina (Commu- nist party of Argentina—PCA), achieved the first continental diffusion of Gramsci’s work, 2 and after 1963 the editions of the Pasado y Presente group appeared, along with the Brazilian editions of Civilização Brasileira. 3 During the second period, according to José Aricó (1988: 12, using an expression 1 This article was presented at the annual congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17-19, 1997, and summarizes the main contents of a study conducted between 1991 and 1995 under the title “As peripécias de Gramsci entre Gulliver e Pequeno Polegar.” The historical analysis therefore ends with 1997; a few notes have been added for readers’ information. 2 Raúl Burgos is a professor of social sciences at the State University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. 3 Carlos Pérez is an assistant professor of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno. 1 coined by Marco Aurélio Nogueira for Brazil), Gramsci’s ideas “erupted like a volcano” in Latin America. Secondly, a political-theoretical observation: during the first period the spread of Gramscian thought did not conflict with the classical paradigm on revolution that had emerged from the Russian Revolution. In the Argentine case, from 1950 to 1963 Gramsci, linked with and restricted to the PCA’s cultural sectors, was read primarily as a cultural theoretician. During the second phase of this period, in the hands of members expelled from the PCA, his work was utilized by political currents critical of its political and theoretical positions but still in the Leninist tradition.Aricó (1988: 62-63, 75) explained: The journal [Pasado y Presente ], whose first series ended in September 1965, attempted to recuperate Marxism’s hegemonic capacity by subjecting it to the demands of the present. From this concern, although its contributions might not have expressed it directly, we questioned so-called Marxism-Leninism as a theoretical and political heritage for the foundation of a transformational culture.Lenin was, for us, the practical demonstration of the strength of a particular method and not a set of abstract and immutable principles; his philosophy was not to be sought where one thought one might find it but instead could be found in his practical action and his reflections on it—not in Materialism and Empirio- Criticism but in the April Theses . We were a rare mix of followers of Guevara and Togliatti. If this unlikely combination was ever possible, we expressed it. Subsequently, the group added to its theorizing “the Leninist and Gramscian matrix” that constituted the theoretical foundations for its reflections. “Gramsci did not free us from Lenin,” Aricó declared, summarizing what I consider a fairly general characteristic of the New Left of that period, “but simply permitted us to acquire a much more complex and open idea of his thought” (Aricó, 1988: 79). For his part, Juan Carlos Portantiero (1991: 8) commented on the same point: It was not only about Gramsci. We concocted a sort of cocktail in which Gramsci coexisted with Guevara and the Chinese Revolution. In that combination we saw possibilities for an articulation with a historicist and voluntarist discourse in contradistinction to one that appeared to us speculative and scientistic. Any one of those three openings (culturalism, Gramsci, or Guevara) allowed us to think of things in this way, although we mainly utilized Gramsci because of his analysis of culture and the subaltern classes. Thirdly, an observation on the area of diffusion: in the first period, Gramsci did not achieve prominence in the university. In the 1950s his 2 influence was limited to small circles. During the 1960s, designated by Aricó as the “Cuban years,” debates in Latin American universities centered on the questions raised by the Cuban Revolution. These issues expressed a state of mind and a spiritual predisposition toward a type of reading in which Gramsci entered tangentially as a part of a renovating movement within Marxism but without any particular relevance. It was only at the end of this first period that Gramsci began to play a major role in academia. During the second period, in contrast, he was thoroughly ensconced within the university, which became a privileged space for discussion and dissemination of his work.4 Arnaldo Córdova (1988: 98), referring to Gramsci’s reception in the Mexican university environment in the 1960s, indicated a shift from the previous direction of diffusion: Something positive occurred outside of the militant left when Gramsci entered the academic environment. Young Marxist professors without any political affiliations, many of whom had studied in Europe, including in Italy, brought along with the recently discovered works of the young Marx a new view of Marxism in which it was common and necessary to reference Gramsci....Now many people were introduced to Gramsci in the Italian, since the Argentine translations of his works were out of print and not circulating in the mid-1960s. Córdova recognized that “in spite of everything, the number of those familiar with Gramsci continued to be extremely limited.” At the same time, he pointed out that Gramsci became generally known through the works of Althusser, with all of the problems that this mediation entailed. It is valid to conclude from Córdova’s text that the introduction of Gramsci to the universities of Latin America was diffuse, “molecular,” in form. Although Mexico’s internal political structure was conflictive, its foreign policy provided a generous haven for exiles with different political tenden- cies in the mid-1970s.In the second half of the 1970s many Latin American leftist intellectuals and militants escaping the military dictatorships of the period found in Mexico a welcome refuge, making the country the nerve center for Latin American political life. In a South America submerged in bloody military dictatorships, with political democracy reigning in only a few countries, and a Central America aflame with revolutionary move- ments, Mexico (primarily, although it was not alone: Venezuela, Cuba, and Costa Rica played a similar role, although with less influence) became a sounding board and a privileged arena for observation, study, and discussion, in its universities and research institutions, of the processes under way in Latin American societies. At the same time, it became an important place for the publication of works related to socialist culture and, especially, Marxism. This “cultural soup” became a marvelous setting for 3 an extensive reflective exercise by the Latin American left on the reasons for the failure of the transformational projects confronted not only by the old left but also by the so-called revolutionary left that emerged in the 1960s. It is worth emphasizing certain “institutional” characteristics of the discussion and spread of leftist ideas under these circumstances. Numerous important scholarly conferences played an influential role. The proceedings of the Mérida (Yucatán) Conference were published by Siglo XXI as Las clases sociales en América Latina in 1973; the Oaxaca Seminar resulted in the 1977 publication, again by Siglo XXI, of Clases sociales y crisis política en América Latina; the October 1978 Puebla Seminar “The Transitional State in Latin America” was published by the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in 1980 as Movimientos populares y alternativas de poder en Latinoamérica ; the Culiacán Conference of 1980 dealt with the work of José Carlos Mariátegui; and the proceedings of the 1980 Morelia (Michoacán) Seminar, devoted to the discussion of the methodological and political func- tionality of the concept of hegemony, were published as Hegemonia y alternativas políticas en América Latina by Siglo XXI in 1985.In particular, the latter conference was conceived within the problematic intersection of practical politics and theory, so it was not accidental that the Gramscian con- ceptualization of hegemony provided the focus. José Aricó (1985: 12, 11) reflected five years later in the preface to the book that emerged from this seminar: The seminar attempted to bridge the gap between the analysis of reality and the theoretical and political propositions regarding its transformation. Without forgetting that the focus of a social science seminar is the discussion of political theory, we sought to approximate a politics capable of struggling for a level of mediation with reality where the rigid boundaries between the “academic” and the “political” become blurred. The seminar ...did not attempt to analyze the historical path the dominant classes undertook to impose their hegemony in Latin America or how they maintain it. Instead, we discussed and studied the theoretical and practical reconstruction and processes necessary for constructing a proletarian or popular hegemony capable of initiating a radical transformation in keeping with the democratic aspirations of the continent’s working classes.

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